If you could have personally witnessed one event in history, what would you want to have seen?
A.
21 thoughts on “Weekend Question Thread”
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If you could have personally witnessed one event in history, what would you want to have seen?
A.
Comments are closed.
Cheney marched to the Hague. Oh, you meant past history. Constitutional Convention.
Nothing monumental, but as my name suggests, I would have loved to have seen The Marx Brothers on Broadway.
That’s an interesting question to ponder. So many of what we consider “great moments in history” – the visual ones anyway- tend to be on the cataclysmic side. Great disaster movie but if could choose to go back and witness? Not so sure.
The amazing wonderful beneficial ones seem fewer and farther between, or they’re undramatic in and of themselves- a signature on a piece of paper or a handshake. If I’m getting to choose what I witness, I’d want it to be exciting
I think I’d pick some amazing musical performance. Janis Joplin singing Ball and Chain at the Monterey Pop festival. She’d performed in public before, had a following of sorts but wasn’t known to the world yet. That was the moment when a critical mass of people stood in gobsmacked awe of someone so improbable and unlikely doing something so incantatory and revelatory, and it also helps it was captured on film (amazing documentary).
Yeah, so I’ll take that.
Second the Cheney suggestion; otherwise, hmmm…this is a hard one. Can’t say I wouldn’t change my mind tomorrow, or even in five minutes, but for now…the first performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
Just one? Or a series?
‘Cause it’d be kind of cool to watch Yellowstone erupt, or the K-T meteorite hit the earth. But not as a corporeal being.
As a series? Well, I’d like to have watched the Egyptians build the pyramids, just to see how they did it.
I saw it on TV, but hands down I’d have given anything to be in Lake Placid for the Miracle on Ice.
In other news, water is wet…
i’d like to see when custer realizes he is truly fucked. if he had that moment before getting hit by arrows.
Woulda loved to have been down on the field for Tracy Porter’s Super Bowl-clinching pick six that left Peyton Manning stunned on his ass.
Aside from that? Just read a book on the Impressionists Manet, Morisot, Degas, and Cassatt. I woulda loved to be in the Salon galleries and in the Salon des Refuses in Paris just to see people’s reactions to these paintings that kicked off the direction in which art has gone up to the present day.
Even further back than that? The creation of glass and glassblowing.
Yes, an art fool’s passion never really dies. Why do you ask?
I’m with Gummo on this one.
It would be great to watch a performance or ten of “I’ll say she is!” or “Coconuts” from the third row.
People always say they would want to watch the battle of Gettysburg, or Thermopylae, or D-day, or some such. These are not places you want to be close enough to to see anything. Too much stuff flying through the air.
Tommy
The first mid-summer sun rise after construction of Stonehenge was completed.
I saw it on TV, but hands down I’d have given anything to be in Lake Placid for the Miracle on Ice.
Ditto!
The launch of Apollo 11. I’ve seen one of the old Saturn V rockets on display at the Cape and it brings out the little devil in you. It’s the size of a skyscraper AND it’s a rocket!?! I’m in.
The first mid-summer sun rise after construction of Stonehenge was completed.
OK, that’s number two on my list. I’d like to have seen the Constitutional convention to have learned how they did it — brought so many disparate interests together to create something so good.
joejoejoe is making me feel old.
Didn’t take much time to come up with this one. Constitutional Convention would have been interesting, Standing on the moon when the lander set down in 1969 would have been cool, too. Sitting next to Einstein when he realized that matter and energy were interchangeable would have been quite amazing.
However, to have been an omnipresent fly-on-the-wall during the Kennedy assassination and the ensuing Warren Commission proceedings would have explained more about the changes in this country after WWII than any other event, because that, to my mind, is when we completely lost our collective mind and way.
FDR’s first inaugural address; one of the best speeches of a great President.
Obama getting the Peace Prize, so I could have laughed out loud.
Jesus telling one of his parables for the first time. The one about the sparrows or the good Samaritan or the prodigal son. I’d video tape it.
Famous speeches heard live. Lincoln. FDR. Kennedy.
I could say one of his miracles, but then people would be all, “Oh I saw how that was done on Secrets of the Great Magicians Revealed!”
See, already changed my mind, wouldn’t have minded hearing the end of the Beatles Abbey Road sessions “that’s a wrap.” Am listening to the side 2 medley right now, and, damn, it’s as good a swan song as anything I’ve ever heard…
Hard to pick just one. But I think either, as Hecate said up at 1, either the Constitutional Convention or Appomattox. Or the creation of the 18-minute gap in the Watergate tape.
I can’t think of anything specific off the top, but it’d have to be something where we don’t know for sure exactly what happened, because I’d like to be able to write the definitive book on it, the one that finally puts all the speculation to rest. I’m simultaneously fascinated by history and irritated by lacunae, go figuree.
Seen too many bad things : Lee Harvey Oswald shot live on tv in Mom’s living room, is about the earliest. JFK Jr. saluting at the funeral. Then JFK Jr.’s plane going missing … only to be found with no survivors.
Might’ve been fun to’ve heard Orson Welles’ WotW broadcast live, if I knew it wasn’t real.